An American mob boss who was depicted in the movie Goodfellas and raked in over $10million a week for the Colombo crime family in New York, revealed he once turned down an invitation to ‘sit down’ at an Italian restaurant with some of Australia’s most ‘feared and respected’ mafia members.
Michael Franzese, 69, told Daily Mail Australia the insulting snub was never meant as a show of disrespect towards Melbourne’s ‘wise guys’.
He’d arrived Down Under for the first time in 2016 after spending over 10 years in jail in the 80s and 90s following a conviction on racketeering charges.
Franzese made the trip as part of a speaking tour – offering up powerful words of wisdom he’d acquired after decades of side-stepping FBI investigations and doing business with the likes of violent Cosa Nostra Godfathers John Gotti and Paul Castellano.
American mob boss Michael Franzese, 69, (pictured) turned down an invite to have dinner with some of Australia’s most ‘feared and respected’ mafia members
‘It took me a long time to get approved to get a visa to come to Australia. I had to hire an attorney and it took months before I was able to travel to Australia,’ Franzese said.
‘Eventually I got approved, but when I got to Australia one of the mob guys there reached out to me and said he’d like me to have dinner at his restaurant in Melbourne.’
Fanzese did not reveal the name of the ‘wise guy’ who made the offer but he did confirm he was a member of Australia’s Calabrian mafia.
The shadowy group, also known as the Ndrangheta, originated in Italy’s south and are the ‘longest continuously operating crime syndicate in Australian history’.
Members have a long association with drug crops in the farming town of Griffith, in the south west of New South Wales, and retain a significant foot-hold in Melbourne, Sydney and other major cities.
Since the 1920s, the group has been linked to drug trafficking, extortion, bombings, stand-over tactics and many of Australia’s most gruesome murders – including some during Melbourne’s bloody gangland killings which played out on the streets in the late 90s and early 2000s.
Pictured: Michael Franzese and his wife Camille Franzese arrive at the premiere of ‘God The Father’ in Los Angeles, California in 2014
Fanzese (pictured with family) did not reveal the name of the ‘wise guy’ who made the offer but he did confirm he was a member of Australia’s Calabrian mafia
‘The Calabrian mafia has a strong presence in Australia and is very well respected around the world,’ Franzese said.
‘They said, ‘he wants to feed you, sit down with you one evening while you’re in town,’ but I had to tell the guy no.’
Franzese was worried Australian authorities would be watching him like a hawk – and that the friendly informal meeting between two ‘made guys’ might see him get deported.
‘I said ‘listen, I’m here to do an event and it took me a long time to do an event, if I do and sit down with other guys like me they’ll probably put me on a plane and throw me out of here’,’ he said.
‘But it was a nice gesture on their part to invite me to dinner so I appreciate it – but I didn’t think it was the right thing to do.’
Although Franzese is not able to travel to Australia due to the coronavirus pandemic, he’ll be streaming an online seminar – How to Business Like a Boss – on Thursday, April 22.
In the talk he’ll discuss what life was like as a ‘captain’ (street boss) in the Colombo crime family at a time when the mafia ran New York by controlling worker’s unions, extorting businesses and holding significant sway over local and state politicians.
‘A lot of things that you learn on the street, you can’t learn anywhere else,’ Franzese said.
‘I made a considerable amount of money both legally and illegally and I have been able to apply the skills I learned back then to the business world over the past 20 years.
‘A lot of people don’t understand that business is business – whether you are doing it illegally as a bookmaker or you’re doing it legally in the real world – you’ve got to know what you’re doing.
‘If you don’t know what you are doing, even if it’s illegal, you’re not going to make any money.’
In 1986, when Franzese was just 35 years of age Fortune Magazine named him number 18 on its list of the ‘Fifty Most Wealthy and Powerful Mafia Bosses’. Anthony ‘Fat Tony’ Salerno of the Genovese crime family is pictured on the cover
During his rise, Franzese became one of the biggest money earners the mafia had ever seen bringing in over $10million dollars a week by bootlegging gas
He says the key to doing good business is being prepared and understanding the art of negotiation.
‘When you’re running the streets of New York and you’ve got to negotiate with the likes of John Gotti and Paul Castellano over business disputes and all sorts of other things, you have to know what you’re doing, you have to be prepared if you want to come out on top,’ Franzese said.
The trick is to try and understand someone’s personality by ‘doing as much research on a person or a company as you possibly can’.
So when Franzese ‘sat down’ with the ‘boss of bosses’ John Gotti, he was well aware the ‘Dapper Don’ was a ‘narcissist’ that hated to lose an argument.
‘The argument would never be finished if John didn’t believe he won so you’ve got to make it feel like a win in his eyes even though it’s really a win for you,’ he said.
‘I was able to outsmart him. I got what I wanted out of John and I sat down with him more than once.’
Franzese was born into the Cosa Nostra (Italian for ‘our thing’) with his Italian-raised father from Naples Sonny Franzese, a respected ‘underboss’ in the Columbian crime family who was sentenced to 50 years in prison for bank robbery, racketeering and extortion.
‘I had 18 arrests, seven indictments, two federal racketeering cases – one brought on by Rudy Guliani – and I eventually wound up doing 10 years in prison,’ Franzese said.
Christina ‘Tina’ Franzese walks out of a grand jury witness room at U.S. District Court in Brooklyn on November 28, 1973 holding audio tapes. Her son Michael Franzese (light pants) walks behind his mother carrying tape recorder
He was also accused of murdering a Genovese crime family hitman-turned-informant Ernest Rupolo in 1964 and dumping his body attached to two concrete blocks, into an estuary – but the charges never stuck.
In contrast, Micheal Franzese was seen to be a little bit more refined than his father and is even nicknamed the ‘Yuppie Don’ because he dressed in a modern way and studied medicine at the prestigious Hofstra University.
But during his rise, Franzese became one of the biggest money earners the mafia had ever seen bringing in over $10million dollars a week by bootlegging gas.
The ingenious scheme defrauded the federal government out of gasoline taxes through forged documents and a series of Panama-based shell companies.
In 1986, when he was just 35 years of age Fortune Magazine named Franzese number 18 on its list of the ‘Fifty Most Wealthy and Powerful Mafia Bosses’.
‘I became a major target of law enforcement. I had 18 arrests, seven indictments, two federal racketeering cases – one brought on by Rudy Guliani – and I eventually wound up doing 10 years in prison,’ Franzese said.
Now living a whole new life in California, Franzese has seven children, is an author of seven books and is in high-demand as a motivational speaker across the globe.
He credits his time behind bars and faith in Christianity for giving him the courage to leave the mafia and turn his life around.
Now living a whole new life in California, Franzese (pictured with family) has seven children, is an author of seven books and is in high-demand as a motivational speaker across the globe
